Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Wednesday said her government's scheme to process thousands of asylum seekers in Albania will be put into action from August.
Meloni and her Albanian counterpart Edi Rama announced the completion of a reception centre in the port city of Shëngjin, with a second facility in the nearby village of Gjadër still to be completed.
The facilities, for migrants picked up by the Italian navy in the Mediterranean Sea, are set to accommodate around 36,000 asylum seekers per year.
"The greatest benefit of this project is that it can be an extraordinary tool to deter those who want to reach Europe irregularly and to combat people smugglers," said Meloni at a joint press conference.
Meloni's anti-immigration Brothers of Italy party took office in the autumn of 2022 with the promise of significantly reducing the number of migrants arriving in Italy across the Mediterranean Sea.
Her government has struggled to achieve the target, however, with almost 158,000 migrants arriving in the country in 2023, a rise of more than 50,000 from the previous year.
The project has proved controversial in both Italy and Albania, with fears over its legality and the treatment of migrants in the centres. Critics have described the facilities as an Italian Guantánamo Bay.
The centres are expected to be used for migrants who actually reach Italian shores by boat, or are picked up by private aid organizations, but for those taken on board by Italian authorities in international waters.